EMYSystem Text Only Species Page: Gopherus agassizii
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order..........TESTUDINES (turtles, tortoises and terrapins)
family...........Testudinidae (Tortoises)
subfamily.......Xerobatinae ()
genus...............Gopherus (Gopher Tortoises)
species..............Gopherus agassizii (Desert Tortoise)
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- Original Description
- Cooper 1863 : 120
- Syntypes
- "Three young specimens, a male of seven years of age, two females of six and four years . . ", apparently originally in the California State Geological Survey collection according to Cooper (1863:120). Syntypes apparently transferred to other collections, since USNM 7888 was listed by Cochran 1961:236 as one of the syntypes; if the other syntypes were transferred to the CAS collection in San Francisco, they were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire.
- Type Locality
- "mountains of California, near Fort Mojave" [USA]; surviving syntype (USNM) from "Utah Basin, Mojave River" (USNM catalog reads 'Soldado Valley, California') according to Cochran (1961:236)
- Original name
- Xerobates agassizii
- Common Name
- Desert Tortoise
- Distribution
- Southeastern California, southern Nevada, and southwestern Utah through southern Arizona (USA), Sonora to northern Sinaloa, and (possibly introduced) the cape region of Baja California Sur, Mexico)
- Comments
- Reviewed by Auffenberg and Franz (1978a and b), Smith and Smith (1979), Groombridge (1982), and Berry (in Swingland and Klemens, 1989). Xerobates lepidocephalus, described by Ottley and Velázquez-Solis (1989:497) from the Cape region of Baja California Sur, is apparently synonymous with G. agassizii (Crumly and Grismer, 1990; see also Pritchard, 1990).
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